An aircraft is provided with a communication system to ensure communication between a plurality of pieces of equipment. This equipment includes, for example, a control and display system in the cockpit, an engine control system, a landing gear system, a surveillance system, etc. All of this equipment or these systems must be able to communicate with each other to ensure the control and safety of the aircraft.
Each piece of equipment is configured to create and/or receive a plurality of signals as a function of its configuration status. For example, the landing gear system is configured to trigger certain signals relative to the status of the aircraft on the ground when pressure is detected on the wheels. On the other hand, other signals relative to an in-flight phase of the aircraft are triggered when no pressure is detected on the wheels.
Moreover, depending on the configuration or flight phase of the aircraft, certain signals can be inhibited while others are activated. For example, during landing, the signals not relevant to that event are inhibited so as not to bother or distract the pilots.
Moreover, in addition to the increasing complexity of aeronautic systems, new functions appear constantly such as, for example, airport navigation assistance, and obstacle prevention (ground, clouds, etc.) adding many information exchanges between the pieces of equipment.
Thus, in each stage of development of the aircraft, laboratory tests, functional simulation tests, initial tests on the aircraft, and certification tests are done in order to assess the maturity level of the various functional or physical equipment and the proper exchange of signals between the various pieces of equipment.
However, the various pieces of equipment of the aircraft can be developed in different geographical locations and by teams having increasingly specialized activities. This can complicate the coordination between all of these different teams.
In particular, different functional or physical equipment developed by different teams can have problems with interfaces that do not help ensure consistency of the exchanges of information between all of this equipment during maturation tests.
Initially, the tests can be prepared from hypotheses that are not completely frozen, provided by the different teams. However, other more precise functions continue to be developed, potentially creating major changes relative to the initial definitions. This can make it very difficult to ensure, on a large scale, the proper exchange of a very large number of signals and the proper synchronization between all of the equipment during maturation tests of the aircraft being developed.
Thus, certain problems can hinder the proper performance of the maturation tests and can require that costly changes be made before being able to redo the tests under good conditions.
For example, certain interfaces may not communicate with each other due to consistency problems between the functional and physical definitions of the interfaces and/or signals. There may also be problems with software applications that do not talk to each other due to deviations relative to what was initially planned.
It is also possible to have problems for certain wiring harnesses that do not match the anticipated model. This may require the modification or even replacement of the assemblies in question.
Furthermore, incorrect connections between the interfaces during the installation of the harnesses can damage some pieces of equipment during the tests.
Moreover, late technical modifications can create incompatibilities between the interfaces of the equipment.
All of these problems may have an impact on the development of the aircraft in terms of schedule and cost.
The object of the present invention is to propose a device and a method for checking a communication system resolving the aforementioned drawbacks, in particular by making it possible to check the consistency of the information exchanges between all of the systems of the aircraft under development.